Invictus

Last night, my husband and I watched the film “Invictus.” I hadn’t seen it and requested it from the library the day Nelson Mandela died. As a student at UAlbany, I had gone to Washington to protest apartheid in the 1980s and remember rejoicing when Mandela was released from jail.

I didn’t really know the whole story regarding the rugby team so it was really wonderful to watch. It’s based on a book – “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation” by John Carlin.

The title of the movie is the title of William Ernest Henley’s poem, which helped Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) deal with prison. Invictus means “unconquerable” in Latin. Mandela gives it to the team captain (played by Matt Damon) to inspire him:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul